Collective behavior in 2D co-culture of cells modeled as active, mechano-adhesive discs

In many biological processes, whether the formation of embryos or of tumors, cells dynamically organize in a context-dependent and spatiotemporal manner. These cells live and actively migrate in a heterogeneous environment of many cell types with different physical properties. For example, in many types of cancers such as colon, melanoma, prostrate and breast cancers, experiments have shown that the cancer cells are mechanically more deformable than the corresponding non-tumorigenic cells. It is also known that while non-cancerous (epithelial) cells tend to adhere to each other due to the adhesion protein E-cadherin and form a confluent tissue, in cancerous (mesenchymal) cells the expression of this protein is often heavily downregulated. Motivated by this, we study the organization of a binary population of two types of self-propelled discs (cells) with different stiffness and adhesion, where the elastic and adhesive cell-cell interaction is modeled by the Johnson-Kendall-Roberts force for two contacting soft spheres. We investigate the growth and structures of segregating clusters by studying MSDs and density structure factors over time. Our results may elucidate how changes in cell mechano-adhesive properties during tumor progression impact cellular organization in tumors.